Admission requirements
This elective course is exclusively for students of the Minor Disinformation and Strategic Communication in Global Media. For this course, no language skills other than English are required to work with the study materials.
Description
The regional electives in block 1 and 2 focus on information dissemination and power structures in local media landscapes.
In this regional elective, students will familiarize themselves with the contemporary Russian media landscape and learn to assess both the reliability of and trust in different media platforms and sources. Using a case-study approach, we will analyze the profound changes that the Russian media landscape is currently undergoing and place this development in a historical perspective.
Imposing restrictions and censorship on media have a long history in Russia. After a short phase of media freedom in the 1990s, the process of media control, along with a crackdown on dissenting voices, has accelerated again since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2014 and especially since the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Today’s tightly controlled Russian media landscape has led to the creation of a parallel world with its own version of ‘truth’. Students will gain insight into the ways in which both language and images are instrumentalized in large-scale disinformation and propaganda campaigns that are used by the Kremlin and social groups loyal to the state to legitimize and gain support for the war and, ultimately, for nation-building purposes. However, we will also look at the loopholes and possibilities that some journalists, activists, and individuals still find to put forward different narratives and world views.
In this course, students will have the chance to do state-of-the-art research on a media environment undergoing a rapid and severe transformation. They will learn to work with methodological tools such as multimodal discourse analysis, media framing analysis, affect analysis and quantitative text analysis to dissect the relationship between power, media, and dissent in today’s Russia.
Course objectives
By the end of this course, students will have acquired:
insight into the development and make-up of the contemporary Russian media landscape;
the ability to critically reflect on the use of different forms of contested information in Russia;
an in-depth understanding of the interrelationship between power, media, and dissent in Russia;
methodological skills to assess and analyze the reliability of and trust in different media platforms and forms of information in Russia;
experience in developing and presenting a small research project in written and oral form, both on an individual and a group level.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
- Seminar.
Assessment method
Assessment
Paper / writing assignment
Oral presentation
Active participation in class
Regular, punctual attendance, thorough preparation of the reading materials, and active participation in plenary discussions are also expected.
Attendance is compulsory. Missing more than one tutorial means that students will be excluded from the tutorials. Unauthorized absence also applies to being unprepared, not participating and/or not bringing the relevant course materials to class.
Weighing
Paper / writing assignment: 60%; minimum grade required: 5,5
Oral presentation: 20%
Active participation: 20%
The final mark for the course is established by determination of the weighted average combined with additional requirements. The additional requirement is a minimum of a 5,5 for the final paper. To pass the course, the weighted average of the partial grades must be 5.5 or higher.
Resit
A resit is only possible for the final paper.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organised.
Reading list
- Reading materials will be made available on Brightspace.
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Arsenaal.
Remarks
Not applicable.